A Link to Physics
by wonder-chef
Summary: A story I did for a physics project last year. Link falls victim to the occasionally realistic physics of his game and Navi, as always, feels it necessary to annoy him with explanations.


Here is a story I wrote for physics last year. It's somewhat entertaining. Oh, and the underlined words are educational!

I don't own Zelda or the laws of nature.

OOO

It was an average day of world saving for Link. He was wandering around; fighting monsters, solving puzzles, riding horses and doing a number of other daring deeds. Behind him, as always, was his companion Navi. Navi was a fairy and basically looked like a small glowing blue dot. She spent her time following Link and relaying useless information that he was already aware of. Link had been a very good boy about her annoying habit, but the other day he had snapped and told her to stop being such a know it all. He thought that had been the end of it; he was wrong. As far as the fairy was concerned, this was simply a challenge to find information that the boy didn't knew.

Knowing that Link was quite knowledgeable about the world from all his traveling, she decided to look in books. After all, the boy was only ten and had hardly had any education. So the previous night she had stayed up reading large textbooks (a difficult task for someone only a couple inches tall). Now she was ready to put her knowledge to use. Grinning to herself she followed Link and waited for him to get them into a situation where she could show off her new information.

Link was exploring an abandoned temple when he gave her a first chance. In order to save time the little green clad boy had decided to leap off a balcony instead of using the stairs like a normal person. He landed hard on the ground and hurt his knees.

"Ow," Link whimpered, "I forgot to roll when I hit the ground. That hurt."

"Do you know why you should have rolled, Link?" Navi asked him.

"Because the monster told me to when I beat him?" He asked looking up at her in mild confusion. Navi glared at him and then answered.

" No Link. It has to do with impulse," she replied.

"You mean like when you suddenly get a feeling that you really want to do something?"

"NO! Impulse is a scientific word, Link! Impulse is the product of the net force exerted on an object and the time interval over which the force acts."

Link stared at the fairy with his mouth open and a blank expression his face. Navi smirked; she was glad to have one-upped him.

"What?" said Link.

"It means that when you fall and slam into the ground you're hit with a lot of force all at once. If you roll when you hit the ground then the impact is spread out. You slow down over a longer period of time and you don't get as hurt," She explained.

"Oh," said Link "What's force? Is it like the triforce?"

"No. The triforce is magical religious symbol of this world. Force is a push or pull exerted on an object having magnitude and direction," Navi answered in a bored tone. She wanted to show Link she was smart, not play teacher. "Listen, just don't die okay?"

"Okay!" Link agreed wholeheartedly, and he marched off into the temple to continue his world saving.

Navi sighed heavily.

OOO

It was later that same day and Link was riding his horse Epona across the field. Navi was floating in the air beside him. She was cross because he hadn't given her any more chances to show off her new knowledge of Physics. Suddenly the horse came to an abrupt stop and Link went flying over her head and landed in jumble in the dirt.

Navi couldn't have been more pleased.

" See that Link! That was momentum!" She called. Link didn't particularly care what momentum was because he was too busy trying to figure out whether or not he had a concussion. Something about the fact that he _didn't _want to know made Navi want to explain it.

" Momentum is inertia in motion. Did you know that Link," She asked brightly.

Link, who had decided that he was not seriously injured, stumbled to his feet. He glared at Navi and walked over to his horse. She was calmly chewing grass and ignoring the tension between the boy and the fairy.

" Oh but you don't know what inertia is do you Link? Inertia is the tendency of an object to keep doing what it's doing. Since you were moving when the horse stopped you kept moving. You weren't attached to the horse so you kept moving until an outside force acted on you. You know what? That was Newton's 1st law. An object in motion maintains a constant velocity and an object at rest stays at rest, unless acted on by an unbalanced force."

When Navi looked up from her rambling, Link and his horse were gone.

OOO

The next day Link was exploring an ice cavern. Navi was back at his side, but there was tension in the air between them. If Link would only mention this Navi could have told him that there was more to tension then strained emotions. She could have told him about tension and centripetal force. But he was too busy sliding around the floor like an idiot.

"I hate walking on ice! It's too slippery!" Link complained. He wasn't really talking to anyone in particular, but Navi decided to use it as an opportunity to break the silence between them.

"It's because there's so little friction," She told him.

Being a generally nice boy, Link decided to humor his comrade.

"What's friction?"

"I'm so glad you asked! Friction is the force that apposes motion. It keeps objects at rest (that's static friction) or slows moving objects down (that's kinetic friction). Ice doesn't have much friction, so you're sliding around like an idiot. It doesn't help that you're so light either."

"If I weighed more there'd be less friction?" Link asked suddenly.

"Yeah, so what? You can't gain Newton's out of nowhere," Navi answered.

Not bothering to ask what Newton's were, Link pulled an item seemingly out of nowhere. He had a habit of doing this, and Navi often wondered exactly where he kept his large and varied arsenal. Right now he was holding a pair of boots. The little boy put them on and began to walk across the ice with more ease.

"Thanks Navi! I never would have thought to use my iron boots! I didn't know being heavy would make this easier; you're the best!"

OOO

Later that day, when Link and Navi had escaped the confines of the ice cavern, Link was traveling up a mountain path. It was a nice day, but suddenly a boulder came barreling downward in their direction . It hit Link and he went flying backwards.

"Ow!"

"Newton's 3rd Law," Navi mumbled.

"What was that?" Link asked, standing up and shaking dirt from his tunic.

"I was just pointing out that you experienced Newton's 3rd Law. All forces act in equal and opposite pairs. When you hit that boulder you put a force on the boulder and the boulder put a force on you. You have less mass though, so that same force had a greater effect on you. That's why you went flying," She said. " The boulder bounced back a little though. You may not have noticed, what with your flying through the air and all."

" Yeah…" Link said. "But if this is another mass thing then I'll just wear my iron boots."

He paused a moment to pull his heavy boots out of thin air and put them on.

"What is mass anyway?" he asked.

"Mass is the quantity of matter that an object contains. It's kind of like weight only with out gravity."

"Oh," he replied starting up the mountain at a slow pace, due to his iron laden feet.

"You know Link. Even if you don't go flying, getting banged in the face with a boulder is still going to hurt," Navi pointed out as Link experienced her warning first hand.

For the second time in two days Navi sighed heavily.

OOO

That night Link and Navi were camping out under the stars. They had reached the mountaintop and were now sitting down to some dinner. Link was being quiet and staring pensively out over the town far beneath them. Navi was concerned because he hadn't touched his dinner.

" I know traveling food is horrible, but you're ten. You'll eat anything. What's wrong, Link?" Navi came and sat on his shoulder.

"I was thinking about all your physics and I was wondering if you could answer a question for me," the boy told her.

"Sure, what is it?"

"How come when I wear my blue tunic I can breathe under water?"

The two comrades stared at one another for a long time. Navi opened and closed her mouth but no words came out. Link looked at her expectantly; she had to think of something.

At last she spoke.

"Magic."

OOO

So that was my lovely physics project. I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
